The present invention is related to estimating occupancy of a region, and more specifically to estimating occupancy of people within the region based on a combination of sensor data and occupant traffic models.
Knowledge regarding the occupancy of a particular region can be useful in a variety of applications. For instance, knowledge of occupancy within a building can be used to improve the efficiency, comfort, and convenience of a building and in emergency situations to improve search and rescue efforts of first responders by providing information regarding the location of occupants. Typically, building occupancy is determined based solely on data provided by sensors. These occupancy estimates may result in the generation of errors due to loss of sensor data or accumulation of errors in the sensor data over time.